Life After The Army » house

I’m a fan

Charlotte — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:05:20 +0000

I love NASCAR. I love to go to races although I haven’t been to a race in several years. My first race ever was in Daytona, Florida. That was in 1979. The track was crowded but not as crowded as it gets today and so much has changed around the track too. There used to be a lot of open spaces now they’re filled with condo hotels and a lot of shopping malls.

When we went to that race and left NJ we left it with ice on the roads. It was beautiful in Florida when we arrived. While at the race we heard a couple of guys talking about how NJ was supposed to get slammed with a blizzard. I called my mom and she said that the weather was just calling for an inch or two so we thought nothing of it. After the race we left and headed north to come home. We got to Jacksonville, Florida and there was ice on the bridges. Further north it turned to snow. We hit snow in Georgia. We couldn’t find a motel with any vacancies so we ended up sleeping in Hubby’s El Camino in a parking lot of a motel. The next morning I called mom again and she told me there was 7 inches on the ground and it was still coming down. That was the last time I heard from her until we got home.

We made it to Virginia the next night and there was a couple feet of snow on the ground by that time but we got lucky and got a motel room that night. We made it back into NJ the next day and were greeted with 3 feet of snow. All I had on my feet were a pair of clogs.

My mom had been babysitting our 3 kids and the electric went out in our house. A relative that lived a block over still had electric and came and got my mom and kids and took them to their house. The electric had come back on by the time we got home. That was one trip I’ll remember for the rest of my life. It has never, except for this time, taken us 3 days to get home from Florida.

Weekend Stuff

Charlotte — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:48:00 +0000

It’s been a busy weekend. I had to take my signed lease renewal papers to the real estate office. They raised my rent $25 a month this year. I guess I should consider myself lucky because they didn’t raise it last year. Hubby says this is the last year here. Next year we will either buy or rent a house. He says if we are going to pay this much we might as well go for a little more in a monthly payment and get a house.

I had to park my car in another parking lot because tomorrow they are paving the rest of the parking lot. I won’t be able to park in my own space again until Tuesday after work. This is gonna suck… but I’ll get my exercise hiking back and forth from my condo to my car. I don’t know why they didn’t just do it all at once when they did part of the parking lot a couple months ago. It makes no sense… *sigh*.

I cleaned the kitchen and the floors yesterday and did laundry today. I still have to put the clean clothes away. I also need to ask hubby to pick up a couple fire extinguishers for me. I didn’t even think about having any until today and since I’m on the second floor that might be a good idea to have 1 or 2.

Getting excited… again

Charlotte — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:52:57 +0000

Andi will be leaving to come home for 5 days on the 13th and I’m getting really excited. I haven’t seen her since the beginning of January. I think things are all ready on this end for her visit. On her end it took some budgeting and planning to make this trip. She could have made her ex meet her halfway again but she wanted to come home and see everyone. I’m glad she made that decision. Everyone here misses her so much.

Andi has had her house up for sale for a few months now and yesterday she got the news that she’s under contract now! Settlement is set for September 15th. She’s getting just $4000 less than her original asking price. She’s so excited. This is the last thing, besides the kids, that was tying her and her ex together. That’s one less argument to have. Things will be much better for both of them once settlement is done with.

I am still alive….

Charlotte — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:31:05 +0000

Really I am… I’ve just been really busy trying to find a place to live and packing. I haven’t really had much time to do any postings here or on any of my blogs.

Benton is doing great. Andi said he had his 1st doctor appointment yesterday and he’s gained back the weight he lost after his birth and then some and is “the picture of health”.

Problems are still running rampant in this family though. Andi was visited by the bank’s repo guy the other day and now she no longer has a car. She told me that on the good side of that she no longer has a $520 a month car payment on a car she doesn’t like. That is all the Army’s fault as she hadn’t gotten a paycheck since the beginning of June and it didn’t help that the bank would not work with her at all. I have Ford Motor Credit for my car and I’m behind in my payments too but they are working with us. They say they want to keep their customers and vehicles together. They deferred the 2 months we are behind and tacked them on to the end of the loan. So we are good to go.

So since Andi won’t be able to come here with the baby we will probably be making a quick trip to Pennsylvania to see them soon. I can’t wait to see Andi and Benton. We’ll get to meet her boyfriend Drew too.

JoJo has been helping me pack. She’s been the “inspector”. She gets on the packed boxes and even in the empty boxes to “inspect” them and give her seal of approval. She climbs into open cabinets and drawers… basically ~~getting in way~~ being cute.

Well… back to work.. there’s lots to clean and pack!!

So far… not so good

Charlotte — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:44:40 +0000

We’ve been trying to find a place to move to and we haven’t had much luck. We went to see a couple places and the 1st one was $1150 a month and wasn’t really a bad size except our dining room furniture wouldn’t fit in the dining area (tiny, tiny, tiny), the closets had no doors (just shelves on a wall), absolutely no pets allowed (landlord has a big dog though) and the biggest thing was the house was literally 5 feet away from the landlord’s house.

Then we went to see a double wide on it’s own lot. That place was $925 a month and was so tiny. The “master suite” looked like only a twin bed would fit in it. The 2nd bedroom was so small if you put a twin bed in it it would take up the whole room. None of our furniture would fit in this place. You would have to be a little person to live there. The ceilings were just a few inches above hubby’s head and he’s 6’2″. It felt very claustrophobic in there.

We’re probably going to have to put our stuff in storage and live in our camper until we can find a place. Not my idea of fun. Hubby, me and the cat… JOY! At least it has a nice kitchen area.

I’m still packing away here. Hubby brings home a few boxes at a time from work otherwise I’d probably be done by now, if I had more boxes.

Andi, her boyfriend Drew and Benton were here this weekend. Benton is such a good baby and rarely cries. Drew is officially Benton’s dad. He stepped up and adopted him. He’s a good guy. Hubby likes him so that’s saying something.

Resolution Time

Charlotte — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:22:06 +0000

It’s that time of the year that everyone makes resolutions that they either have no intention of sticking too or they just set their standards too high to be able to keep the resolution. What are your resolutions for 2010? I have just 2. I resolve to find a job this year and find a place to live, other than this camper.

I have officially been unemployed for a year now and the economy has made it very hard to find another. Money has been horribly tight and even with great shopping deals that abound this time of year Christmas shopping, for me, was practically non-existent. I always try to compare shopping prices when I shop online…. it’s just the smart thing to do.

I am really looking forward to becoming employed again and feeling back to normal. I just feel so disconnected with everything right now. I need to get my life back to normal, get a place to live, get our things out of storage and start really living again.

Our daughter, her boyfriend and our 4 grandkids will probably be living with us so we will need a nice sized house along with a freezer so we can stock up on things when they are on sale. I would also love to find a place that has nice, new stainless steel appliances. That would be my dream.

I hope all of my readers have a healthy and prosperous New Year!

**I was compensated for this post and all words/opinions are my own.**

A whole lotta movin’ goin’ on

Charlotte — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:56:34 +0000

I heard the sound of a big diesel truck outside this morning and when we opened the blinds the neighbors now have a PODS in their driveway. They’ve had their house for sale since we moved here (the beginning of October) so either they finally sold it or they haven’t sold and still have to move.

My sis-in-law came up with a proposal for Andi this weekend. She’s been wanting to sell her house so she asked Andi if she would like to pay the mortgage and bills and sis-in-law would move into an apartment. So that house is going to get crowded here real soon. It will be Andi, Drew, Drew’s dad, Benton, hubby & me all living there. Splitting everything 3 ways will make it so much easier on everyone too.

YES!!! I’m finally going to get my stuff back! I’ve missed my stuff so much. I’ll finally have my computer desk back and won’t be needing these barstools that I’m using for a desk now.

The house has 3, possibly 4, bedrooms so there is enough room for everyone. It has 2 full baths and a half bath, which actually has room to put in another shower/tub. It’s a split level and there is a family room downstairs which means 2 living areas. The only downside is there is no dining room so my table will have to live, in pieces, in the garage.

I’m really excited to get out of this “phone booth” we’ve been living in since October.

Grandmom’s house

Charlotte — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:35:02 +0000

When my uncle died, several years ago, we cleaned out his house (it was my grandparents house) and went through a lot of stuff. During the last several years of his life he rarely threw out anything. There were a ton of magazines piled up on the dining room table. I looked though some of them hardly noticed any apidexin reviews. I guess that’s because it’s a fairly new product.

I found a ton of old pictures that I still have but they are in storage at the moment. I scanned some of them and want to get the rest scanned. I also would like to make some sort of scrap book for all of those pictures. I don’t have names to go with a lot of the pictures so I have the ones I have scanned up online hoping someone will see them and know who they are and help me out some.

I work on our genealogy from time to time because I run into dead ends. I’ll stop doing it for awhile and when I start up again I end up finding more information. Just recently I found a lot of “new” ancestors that I couldn’t find before. As more and more people start putting their family trees online I find information I was unable to find before. I keep updating our tree and uploading it so researchers can find it and add to their trees.

More changes

Charlotte — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:33:05 +0000

Well, that didn’t last long. My sister-in-law came over and told us she’s putting the house up for sale. We can stay here until it’s sold but I was hoping things would turn out differently. Right now it’s so up in the air that I don’t know what we are doing. I really wasn’t planning a move again so soon.

On another note; I put in my resume with a temp agency today. I’m willing to try just about anything to get a job. I hope I find one soon. This not working thing is getting old real quick.

The other 3 grandkids are here this weekend and the house is quite noisy. We just had another delicious dinner cooked by Drew. He barbecued some nice thick pork chops. They turned out so good. They were so tender and juicy.

Moving……. again

Charlotte — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:31:22 +0000

I’m going to be moving again. My sister-in-law is moving back into her house, which is where I am now, and I’ll be moving into her one bedroom condo in Smithville. It will be much cheaper for me and I think I’ll really like it because I can walk to stores and stuff.

The move will probably happen on December 11th. I really don’t have a lot to pack up at the moment so it should be an easy move. Wish me luck.

Oh… does anyone know where I can get a reasonably priced computer tower with Windows 7 on it? I’d love to find something under $300. I don’t need a keyboard or monitor, I still have mine from the computer I murdered a few months ago. Actually it doesn’t matter what it would cost because I really can’t afford to buy anything at all right now. I’m still unemployed and don’t have much in the way of income.